The Brothers Karamazov
and for all, it’s not you. You hear, once for all! God has put it into
my heart to say this to you, even though it may make you hate me from
this hour.”
But by now Ivan had apparently regained his self-control.
“Alexey Fyodorovitch,” he said, with a cold smile, “I can’t endure
prophets and epileptics—messengers from God especially—and you know
that only too well. I break off all relations with you from this moment
and probably for ever. I beg you to leave me at this turning. It’s the
way to your lodgings, too. You’d better be particularly careful not to
come to me to-day! Do you hear?”
He turned and walked on with a firm step, not looking back.
“Brother,” Alyosha called after him, “if anything happens to you
to-day, turn to me before any one!”
But Ivan made no reply. Alyosha stood under the lamp-post at the cross
roads, till Ivan had vanished into the darkness. Then he turned and
walked slowly homewards. Both Alyosha and Ivan were living in lodgings;
neither of them was willing to live in Fyodor Pavlovitch’s empty house.
Alyosha had a furnished room in the house of some working people. Ivan
lived some distance from him. He had taken a roomy and fairly
comfortable lodge attached to a fine house that belonged to a
well-to-do lady, the widow of an official. But his only attendant was a
deaf and rheumatic old crone who went to bed at six o’clock every
evening and got up at six in the morning. Ivan had become remarkably
indifferent to his comforts of late, and very fond of being alone. He
did everything for himself in the one room he lived in, and rarely
entered any of the other rooms in his abode.
He reached the gate of the house and had his hand on the bell, when he
suddenly stopped. He felt that he was trembling all over with anger.
Suddenly he let go of the bell, turned back with a curse, and walked
with rapid steps in the opposite direction. He walked a mile and a half
to a tiny, slanting, wooden house, almost a hut, where Marya
Kondratyevna, the neighbor who used to come to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s
kitchen for soup and to whom Smerdyakov had once sung his songs and
played on the guitar, was now lodging. She had sold their little house,
and was now living here with her mother. Smerdyakov, who was ill—almost
dying—had been with them ever since Fyodor Pavlovitch’s death. It was
to him Ivan was going now, drawn by a sudden and irresistible
prompting.
Chapter VI.
The First Interview With Smerdyakov
This was the third time that Ivan had been to see Smerdyakov since his
return from Moscow. The first time he had seen him and talked to him
was on the first day of his arrival, then he had visited him once more,
a fortnight later. But his visits had ended with that second one, so
that it was now over a month since he had seen him. And he had scarcely
heard anything of him.
Ivan had only returned five days after his father’s death, so that he
was not present at the funeral, which took place the day before he came
back. The cause of his delay was that Alyosha, not knowing his Moscow
address, had to apply to Katerina Ivanovna to telegraph to him, and
she, not knowing his address either, telegraphed to her sister and
aunt, reckoning on Ivan’s going to see them as soon as he arrived in
Moscow. But he did not go to them till four days after his arrival.
When he got the telegram, he had, of course, set off post-haste to our
town. The first to meet him was Alyosha, and Ivan was greatly surprised
to find that, in opposition to the general opinion of the town, he
refused to entertain a suspicion against Mitya, and spoke openly of
Smerdyakov as the murderer. Later on, after seeing the police captain
and the prosecutor, and hearing the details of the charge and the
arrest, he was still more surprised at Alyosha, and ascribed his
opinion only to his exaggerated brotherly feeling and sympathy with
Mitya, of whom Alyosha, as Ivan knew, was very fond.
By the way, let us say a word or two of Ivan’s feeling to his brother
Dmitri. He positively disliked him; at most, felt sometimes a
compassion for him, and even that was mixed with great contempt, almost
repugnance. Mitya’s whole personality, even his appearance, was
extremely unattractive to him. Ivan looked with indignation on Katerina
Ivanovna’s love for his brother. Yet he went to see Mitya on the first
day of his arrival, and that interview, far from shaking Ivan’s belief
in his guilt, positively strengthened it. He found his brother
agitated, nervously excited. Mitya had been talkative, but very
absent-minded and incoherent. He used violent language, accused
Smerdyakov, and was fearfully muddled. He talked principally about the
three thousand roubles, which he said had been “stolen” from him by his
father.
“The money was mine, it was my money,” Mitya kept repeating. “Even if I
had stolen it, I should have had the right.”
He hardly contested the evidence against him, and if he tried to turn a
fact to his advantage, it was in an absurd and incoherent way. He
hardly seemed to wish to defend himself to Ivan or any one else. Quite
the contrary, he was angry and proudly scornful of the charges against
him; he was continually firing up and abusing every one. He only
laughed contemptuously at Grigory’s evidence about the open door, and
declared that it was “the devil that opened it.” But he could not bring
forward any coherent explanation of the fact. He even succeeded in
insulting Ivan during their first interview, telling him sharply that
it was not for people who declared that “everything was lawful,” to
suspect and question him. Altogether he was anything but friendly with
Ivan on that occasion. Immediately after that interview with Mitya,
Ivan went for the first time to see Smerdyakov.
In the railway train on his way from Moscow, he kept thinking of
Smerdyakov and of his last conversation with him on the evening before
he went away. Many things seemed to him puzzling and suspicious. But
when he gave his evidence to the investigating lawyer Ivan said
nothing, for the time, of that conversation. He put that off till he
had seen Smerdyakov, who was at that time in the hospital.
Doctor Herzenstube and Varvinsky, the doctor he met in the hospital,
confidently asserted in reply to Ivan’s persistent questions, that
Smerdyakov’s epileptic attack was unmistakably genuine, and were
surprised indeed at Ivan asking whether he might not have been shamming
on the day of the catastrophe. They gave him to understand that the
attack was an exceptional one, the fits persisting and recurring
several times, so that the patient’s life was positively in danger, and
it was only now, after they had applied remedies, that they could
assert with confidence that the patient would survive. “Though it might
well be,” added Doctor Herzenstube, “that his reason would be impaired
for a considerable period, if not permanently.” On Ivan’s asking
impatiently whether that meant that he was now mad, they told him that
this was not yet the case, in the full sense of the word, but that
certain abnormalities were perceptible. Ivan decided to find out for
himself what those abnormalities were.
At the hospital he was at once allowed to see the patient. Smerdyakov
was lying on a truckle-bed in a separate ward. There was only one other
bed in the room, and in it lay a tradesman of the town, swollen with
dropsy, who was obviously almost dying; he could be no hindrance to
their conversation. Smerdyakov grinned uncertainly on seeing Ivan, and
for the first instant seemed nervous. So at least Ivan fancied. But
that was only momentary. For the rest of the time he was struck, on the
contrary, by Smerdyakov’s composure. From the first glance Ivan had no
doubt that he was very ill. He was very weak; he spoke slowly, seeming
to move his tongue with difficulty; he was much thinner and sallower.
Throughout the interview, which lasted twenty minutes, he kept
complaining of headache and of pain in all his limbs. His thin
emasculate face seemed to have become so tiny; his hair was ruffled,
and his crest of curls in front stood up in a thin tuft. But in the
left eye, which was screwed up and seemed to be insinuating something,
Smerdyakov showed himself unchanged. “It’s always worth while speaking
to a clever man.” Ivan was reminded of that at once. He sat down on the
stool at his feet. Smerdyakov, with painful effort, shifted his
position in bed, but he was not the first to speak. He remained dumb,
and did not even look much interested.
“Can you talk to me?” asked Ivan. “I won’t tire you much.”
“Certainly I can,” mumbled Smerdyakov, in a faint voice. “Has your
honor been back long?” he added patronizingly, as though encouraging a
nervous visitor.
“I only arrived to-day.... To see the mess you are in here.”
Smerdyakov sighed.
“Why do you sigh? You knew of it all along,” Ivan blurted out.
Smerdyakov was stolidly silent for a while.
“How could I help knowing? It was clear beforehand. But how could I
tell it would turn out like that?”
“What would turn out? Don’t prevaricate! You’ve foretold you’d have a
fit; on the way down to the cellar, you know. You mentioned the very
spot.”
“Have you said so at the examination yet?” Smerdyakov queried with
composure.
Ivan felt suddenly angry.
“No, I haven’t yet, but I certainly shall. You must explain a great
deal to me, my man; and let me tell you, I am not going to let you play
with me!”
“Why should I play with you, when I put my whole trust in you, as in
God Almighty?” said Smerdyakov, with the same composure, only for a
moment closing his eyes.
“In the first place,” began Ivan, “I know that epileptic fits can’t be
told beforehand. I’ve inquired; don’t try and take me in. You can’t
foretell the day and the hour. How was it you told me the day and the
hour beforehand, and about the cellar, too? How could you tell that you
would fall down the cellar stairs in a fit, if you didn’t sham a fit on
purpose?”
“I had to go to the cellar anyway, several times a day, indeed,”
Smerdyakov drawled deliberately. “I fell from the garret just in the
same way a year ago. It’s quite true you can’t tell the day and hour of
a fit beforehand, but you can always have a presentiment of it.”
“But you did foretell the day and the hour!”
“In regard to my epilepsy, sir, you had much better inquire of the
doctors here. You can ask them whether it was a real fit or a sham;
it’s no use my saying any more about it.”
“And the cellar? How could you know beforehand of the cellar?”
“You don’t seem able to get over that cellar! As I was going down to
the cellar, I was in terrible dread and doubt. What frightened me most
was losing you and being left without defense in all the world. So I
went down into the cellar thinking, ‘Here, it’ll come on directly,
it’ll strike me down directly, shall I fall?’ And it was through this
fear that I suddenly felt the spasm that always comes ... and so I went
flying. All that and all my previous conversation with you at the gate
the evening before, when I told you how frightened I was and spoke of
the cellar, I told all that to Doctor Herzenstube and Nikolay
Parfenovitch, the investigating lawyer, and it’s all been written down
in the protocol. And the doctor here, Mr. Varvinsky, maintained to all
of them that it was just the thought of it brought it on, the
apprehension that I might fall. It was just then that the fit seized
me. And so they’ve written it down, that it’s just how it must have
happened, simply from my fear.”
As he finished, Smerdyakov drew a deep breath, as though exhausted.
“Then you have said all that in your evidence?” said Ivan, somewhat
taken aback. He had meant to frighten him with the threat of repeating
their conversation, and it appeared that Smerdyakov had already
reported it all himself.